Out of the earth - out of this world

Stunning and profound ... a collection of larrakitj, or hollow log burial poles, stands on the escarpment at Gulkula, overlooking the Gulf of Carpentaria. The installation was created by the Buku Larrngay Mulka Art Centre at Yirrkala. Photo: Sean Hogben

Aboriginal art in all its forms is key to understanding our land and its people. Its makers are reaching out to present their view of the cosmos - but the price is a better deal for the artists who reveal it. Sean Hogben reports.

Djambawa Marawili looks down silently. 10,000 metres below him the serpentine watercourses of his country meander into the aqua seas of the Gulf of Carpentaria. For the Balanda (white person) the vision is beautiful, fascinating and desolate - no sign of habitation for hundreds of kilometres. For Djambawa it is teeming with vitality and meaning, the intricate matrix of land and water shape-shifting into the design of life that for this renowned Yolngu painter was, is and will be.

Djambawa Marawili is both artist and leader. He is a leader of the Madarrpa clan of east Arnhem Land and chairman of the Association of Northern, Kimberley and Arnhem Aboriginal Artists. His administrative burden is onerous, his responsibilities to his land and people equally so. Far above his homeland residence at Baniyala, an unmarked dot overlooking Blue Mud Bay on the western shores of the Gulf, he is on his first journey to Brisbane - for an Australian Tax Office-hosted conference on GST.

ANKAAA's Darwin-based manager, Stephanie Hawkins, says Djambawa made a simple, eloquent and powerful request for the abolition of GST on Aboriginal art works.

"Djambawa said: 'When I want to paint, I use the hair from my head for a brush, I use the ochres from my country that I walk miles to get, I use the bark from trees to paint on. Why should I pay GST on things that I own?'. He said 'Maybe you can't understand my English, my sister Stephanie can explain.' The ATO people replied: 'We understand very clearly what you are saying'."

That the ATO appreciates Djambawa's statement in itself is a breakthrough. For many east Arnhem Land Aborigines, English is their second language. For them, both the English language and our education system appear inadequate to help them prepare and convey their messages. As a result, the huge gulf between our cultures has never been effectively bridged at a society-wide level.

For this writer, my first trip to Arnhem Land and close contact with Yolngu people was both captivating and daunting. I found the local culture complex and profound and often felt it would take years for me to "get it".

If it weren't for the likes of Djambawa Marawili, and many hundreds of other fine artists making a concerted effort to close the cultural gap, I would never have seen the shortcut to feeling something of what they do about their land.

How to understand some of the myriad aspects of an Aborigine's place in his natural world - for him the pivot about which all turns? Just look at the diversity, sophistication and vigour of his art.

Traditional Aboriginal art is sometimes a complex and multi-layered view of the world that can be explained to the inexpert. The best of it is a door to perception, to a view of the cosmos at once stunning and profound. This world view is also purely, ecologically sustainable and so is deeply attractive to Australia's fastest growing political movement.

In his reserved and dignified way, Djambawa is a political activist, teacher and emissary. Like many of his Yolngu brothers and sisters, he is reaching across the gulf between white and black Australians. In its simplest form, this diplomacy offers the chance at a better understanding of each other's daily lives. Beyond this renewed effort by Yolngu people to communicate with white society lie the pathways to reconciliation so feint, so elusive to previous generations of Australians.

At the heart of the map lies Aboriginal art. For some of we Balanda (a corruption of the word Hollander, the first white people Yolngu - Arnhem Land people - saw) Aboriginal art, including the hypnotic bark paintings for which Djambawa is famous, offers merely an astute investment opportunity. There are still deals to be made that can make the canny trader rich.

In the frenzy of buying centred on the August Darwin Festival, impressive works and piles of money change hands. Almost unintentionally, wealthy and influential white people are being exposed to concepts of fundamental importance to northern Aborigines, expressed both traditionally and in modern art forms.

If the commitment to excellence Aboriginal artists have shown over 40 years continues, and white Australians keep buying indigenous art at an ever-increasing rate, the messages can't help but spread. It's a win-win situation; we get pleasure and the stories direct, and maybe an increased understanding, Aborigines get paid to work at something they love - and are very, very good at - explaining themselves and their world view by telling, acting, dancing, singing, sculpting and painting.

In its current boom period, Aboriginal art is also key to Aboriginal economic development, especially in the Northern Territory. The NT government estimates $38 million of the $100 million national turnover in Aboriginal art and craft in 2001-02 (a conservative estimate) was spent in NT.

The NT government places great store in the economic activity it drives in remote Aboriginal communities, seeing it as crucial to their viability. NT Chief Minister Clare Martin quotes figures stating that in 2001-02 $10 million flowed through community-owned arts centres. The non-profit art centres provide commercial guidance, work space, materials and a contact point for buyers.

Ms Martin also points out that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (ATSIS) investment of $1.5 million in ANKAAA-member indigenous art centres generated $6.23 million in sales; of that $3.68 million went directly to artists, $2.5 million was re-invested in the centres.

It is these economic facts that prompted the NT government to produce Australia's first indigenous arts strategy. It is a six year plan with modest funding of $3.2 million over three years but Ms Martin, who is also Minister for Arts, Museums and Indigenous Affairs (as well as five other ministries), sees its as a critical economic driver in the NT economy.

The strategy grew from a framework devised this year by Professor Jon Altman, Director of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at ANU. Professor Altman is full of praise for the NT government which he says, in enacting this strategy, is breaking the trail for a new road to reconciliation.

"They're enlightened and they are showing fantastic national leadership," he says of the Martin government. "The way I couched the framework goes a bit beyond what they say in their strategy. What I said was the future of the NT and indigenous development in the NT could only be furthered by supporting the arts. I just can't see a negative side for the government supporting the indigenous arts industry.

"Over the past 20 years, despite limited Territory support, it's done very well. What this strategy does is provide a framework to make existing arts practice stronger. Existing practice is predicated on visual art which is mainly coming out of rural and remote parts of the Territory but (the policy direction is) also to try to build that success into other art sectors. I don't think you can ask government to do more than that."

The strategy is broken into three sections aimed at negotiating and building new partnerships between government and indigenous artists, delivering better services to them via new infrastructure and increasing and improving marketing and export opportunities. Behind the strategy stands the Martin promise for open and honest consultation, protection of artists' rights and leaving Aborigines the authority to rule on cultural priorities.

Throughout Aboriginal culture and politics runs the cord that binds people to the land. "In a place like the NT the very fact that people have the opportunity to own land and to maintain links both to land and what that represents to them, is a sort of spiritual grounding," says Jon Altman. "We should make no mistake that much of the art is about people making political statements about the ownership and links to country."

Those ownership links are fundamental to the success of art in the NT and the success of Aboriginal society in general, Altman observes. Closely associated with land rights and the homelands movement, the successful growth of the Aboriginal art market produces economic outcomes very different to say, the mining royalties enjoyed by just a few communities.

"The impact of mining is pretty coralled," he says. "They are little pimples on a massive land base in the NT. In terms of the NT economy, what generally comes out of mining is very little value adding. It is mainly export. When you look at Territory product you find it is much higher than territory income because the mineral wealth is exported."

For the NT government and Chief Minister Martin, backing Aboriginal artists is a clear economic imperative. Ms Martin points out the direct benefits of employment, and enrichment of the NT's crucial tourism industry. In many remote communities, they are the two major sources of income.

Jon Altman also sees challenges. "There are two crucial (outstanding) issues in terms of making this all a wonderful success," he says. The NT government has got to maintain alliances with Commonwealth funders because they too are really important players in the NT industry. That's quite legitimate because there's a national interest in NT indigenous arts practice. It's not just for the Northern Territory, it's for the nation.

"Getting the framework in place doesn't mean we are going to get some sort of miraculous outcome. You've obviously got to have the artistic commitment, adherence to arts excellence, there are issues to do with authenticity and integrity. It's up to the arts practitioners to deliver. Governments can only do so much.

"The spiritual aspect is incredibly important, the relationships to land, the binding together of communities, all these social outcomes of arts practice are very positive. But we mustn't put unrealistic expectations on the sector and we're still very careful about authenticity and proper artistic practice. That's why the arts infrastructure is so important."

Altman is an unabashed champion of the community-owned arts centres that are often the only functioning businesses in remote communities across northern Australia.

The importance of Desart and ANKAAA-member centres is mainly structural and focussed on mediation with overseas and southern art markets. Urban Aboriginal art doesn't need so much mediation, Altman says. The community centres are integral to the industry in the NT and look after hundreds of artists, taking care of them, their families and their marketing, and protecting artistic intellectual property. "If centres fold art movements can dissipate," Altman says.

"There is nothing in the (NT) strategy which works against artists going it alone in the art market. I personally believe that it is not necessarily in their best interests. But we live in a world where competition is encouraged and if artists want to operate that way they should be at liberty to do so."

As well as its economic and social benefits the soaring popularity of Aboriginal art has brought its producers and buyers face to face. Increasingly, a trip to the NT for southerners will involve tourism and shopping, either for high-priced, fine art works or "tourist" arts and crafts. At the bush centres and city galleries, links are growing between black and white Australians, mostly because money is changing hands.

Professor Howard Morphy, Director of the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research at the Australian National University and perhaps the world's leading expert on Australian Aboriginal art, sees little danger from commercialisation to the integrity of indigenous artists' very important cultural messages.

In fact, he says within a busy art market lie many opportunities for Aboriginal people to further their political, cultural and economic cause.

"Aboriginal art is one of the few indigenous art forms that has actually become known globally through the process, in part, of its commercialisation - through the production of art for sale, by people in central Australia, in Arnhem Land and south east Australia and so on. It's part of contemporary Australia," he says.

"It was fairly invisible. In the case of central Australian art (it is) amazingly rich in song, in ceremonial performance in sand sculpture and so on, a lot of which was restricted (from the general public). One of the things the western desert art movement did was to produce the visual art there already, in a form for wider consumption. So people actually became aware of the richness of this art tradition and then you've had an almost autonomous development.

"People who worry art will be devalued, often they're not aware of the process of artistic creation and formation of judgements which is quite sophisticated. People suddenly say 'Oh those (Aboriginal) people are producing things for sale and the market is influencing it, therefore it will gradually deteriorate in quality. But that kind of argument can be applied to any culture's art, not just indigenous Australians'. Indigenous Australians are very aware of those dangers, often more than other populations."

Recognising this shift and the importance of controlling what happens to Aboriginal art once it is produced, the Yothu Yindi Foundation, organisers of the Garma festival in Gulkula, east Arnhem Land, made visual art the theme of this year's bush camp to which 350 people were invited. Academics, legislators, decision and policy makers came to the camp, together with art dealers, curators, buyers and the artists themselves.

The likes of Morphy and Altman led many workshops and discussions. Justice Kevin Lindgren, a West Australian judge and expert on copyright, addressed the forum, or Dhuni, of Garma. The sessions were packed with serious intellectuals earnestly trying to make their knowledge useable for the equally impressive guest list of Yolngu leaders and artists, including Djambawa Marawili.

The canteen throbbed like a five-star resort, Telstra's Ted Pretty, ground-breaking Aboriginal singer Jimmy Little, Nine's Today show host Steve Liebman and a clutch of international bankers, brokers and business leaders rubbing shoulders with the 10-man delegation from the Dinkum Aussies, the thousand-strong Tokyo yidaki (didgeridoo) club.

Camped in the Gulkula stringybark forest, lulled by Aboriginal song piped gently through the ubiquitous Yothu Yindi sound systems, it was easy to believe all could be right between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. Yolngu people moved freely on their land, Northern Territorians' casual friendliness added to the bush camp informality and even for those who had had little contact with indigenous Australians, Gulkula felt a very comfortable zone.

Garma is not new. Traditionally, it is a meeting of clans for a knowledge exchange. A "respectful learning environment" says the Garma program. The Garma centrepiece, a forum or Dhuni, is a "crash course" says Galarrwuy Yunupingu, AM, Garma's chief and chairman of the Northern Land Council. He is one of Australia's most influential Aboriginal leaders.

Galarrwuy is also chairman of the Yothu Yindi Foundation, the 1990 brainchild of his brother, Mandawuy Yunupingu, songwriter and leader of the rock band Yothu Yindi, and its manager, Alan James. It is a non-profit body dedicated to maintaining and furthering the development and sharing of Yolngu culture. Led by elders of five Yolngu clans, YYF decided the exchange must happen on Yolngu terms, on Yolngu land.

Previous Garma festivals have run forums on law (2001) and the environment (2002).

"Garma is not closed, it's open knowledge for learning," Gallarrwuy says, adding that he would like to see Australians come from their suburban and regional homes to spend time with Yolngu people in their home country.

"I leave the Garma site and Garma activities wide open. It costs you to come here but I think you will appreciate your money (is well spent) when you pay your way into the Garma site for four days of activities and I think it is good to see people from cities and urban areas to be participating.

"This Garma in particular is visual art - the topic has been clearly set - it has attracted a lot of people to Garma this year," Galarrwuy says. "I think it is wonderful the way people have responded and turned up. It is a great achievement in itself.

"Garma is a big movement in itself. I think it has taken a course and is going to take on a stronger course, attracting hundreds and thousands of people to Garma for the benefit of celebrating and sharing of Aboriginal knowledge. An objective of Garma is to share in learning the knowledge of Aboriginal people."

Most Garma visitors are there to walk both sides of the track. Just as they see expositions of Yolngu culture and experience their daily life, they are there to share their own ways, such as how the commercial art world works.

"It is mainly aimed at the leadership and people who are very much involved in arts and culture, or visual arts, at this forum," Galarrwuy says. "For them (Aborigines) to take some leadership and take back to their communities and develop it in a way so that it is something Aboriginal people can take a lead in shaping it as commercial as well as cultural involvement.

"It is a knowledge that had to be shared. Garma aims at that and has been set up really clearly with that aim.

"You can call it a political (agenda). You can't get away from involvement in politics. I think it is a single, clear message to Aboriginal people particularly. I want to take an opportunity at every Garma gathering, and particularly this special gathering, whereby Aboriginal people are taking opportunities to share their knowledge much more strongly than ever before."

The large foreign contingent present at Garma reflects the deep interest in Aboriginal art and affairs overseas - in Europe, in particular. At Garma, Europeans' attitude to Yolngu people appeared very open and curious. Galarrwuy welcomes their visits and encourages them to spread the word.

"I think they (overseas guests) will bring more people," he says. "It's more resourceful by inviting their friends, their families, their work contacts, to be more involved. Garma is not closed, it's open knowledge for learning. I'm hoping they take it to Japan, to Europe and America, that Garma exists in east Arnhem Land, Australia, and that it is here for grabs."

Jon Altman feels constructive indigenous policy is on a roll in NT and hopes other governments will follow the Martin lead of including Aborigines in economic activity, on their terms. "One of the things that the change in government in 2001 has done is to change the whole approach of government and bureaucracy in the NT to be more inclusive of Aboriginal Territorians," he says. "I believe that way forward won't change with a change in government. There's too much locked in.

"People want to provide solutions for very difficult issues for Aboriginal communities and that is sometimes beside the point. The point is that (Aboriginal) people have got the vitality and the will and the drive to produce fantastic art in often very difficult domestic and community circumstances.

"The whole perception that (white) people have that Aboriginal people never commit to things, they never put in great effort ... then you look at a piece of art and you think: 'Well, look at this! This wasn't just done in a day'. There is obviously real personal commitment to artistic excellence.

"Much of this (NT government strategy) is about reinvigorating recognition of many of the things indigenous people do that are very positive. In some ways school curriculums and the schooling system in the Northern Territory and the economic system in general tend to marginalise indigenous practice across a whole spectrum of things.

"Arts and music performance is much more about recognition and incorporation, recognising this as part of positive social, economic, community cultural activity we want to see happening.

"Where will it go in 20 or 30 years time? Who knows? In some ways, just as we have backlogs in things like housing and community infrastructure on the physical side we've also got backlogs in recognising the value, and in the case of art, the beauty of what indigenous people do. Just getting some more mainstream recognition of that would be very positive."

A key speaker at Garma and a leading artist himself is Gawirrin Gumana. His life, near destroyed in childhood by leprosy, has been a triumph of the will. When he was discharged from the Darwin leprosarium as a young man, he paddled home in a canoe, his stumps of fingers pushing him nearly 400 kilometres along the Arnhem coast. His family thought they had lost him forever. An old man now, his paintings are wonderfully rich and intricate, prize-winning, and highly sought after.

"I win $40,000 last year," Gawirrin told a rapt Garma group. "I use it for something for my family. I didn't use it on grog, on drugs. This year I'm painting, working hard with - maybe you know him - Djambawa (Marawili, a fellow clansman and bark painting master) working together through the Americans, on dancing, ceremony, how we are living in Australia.

"Not only in Northern Territory but maybe somewhere else too. Those places where people maybe lose their culture, their copyright. Trying to help them, where they lose their culture, their language and ceremony and tribes. They got tribes maybe, I don't know.

"Myself I'm trying to talk to young people, old people, middle aged people, I'm worried about western world, how we keep making our culture? That's what I'm working on with Djambawa. With America.

"This year I get that medal, that AO, that's not only for me, it's for everybody. For my mind, for my thinking, we should come together like today, you people should come like Yolngu people and Yolngu people should learn about western world. That's what I'm worried about.

"Yolngu people want to know something about your world. I'm worried about the young people, what they going to do today? Is it going to be a one way thing, in the western world, or somewhere else? We should learn together and work together, and help one another. That's what I'm worried for the young people, not just Yolngu young people but young white people. We should do something for our young people. Thank you."

When you read the stories which are described in Gawirrin's paintings, then examine his work, you just might "get it". He doesn't have to traipse around the galleries and exhibitions to speak but he does because he wants white people to know and understand his world better. There's an ancient, profound and extraordinary body of information that Gawirrin, Djambawa and all the other artists are laying out for white Australia, and as Galarrwuy Yunupingu says, it's up for grabs.